[Need feedback] Installation/Setup experience of MP (4 Viewers)

[matis1]

IMHO the problems do really start AFTER the installation: its my feeling that more manpower of the developers has to be invested in the PVR function. many threads cope with the inability to setup the resume from standby and the proper scheduling of recordings. it is very disappointing when your media center fails to do this job again and again.
up til now there is virtually no setup for this part of the software. wouldnt it be charing to have such a guide through the problem? i know that it is not an easy one due to hardware reasons....

 

[mrfx]

Becouse of autotune has found too many channels (the same channels was doubled and some kind of noise was detected as a channel) I have to correct that. I have to do some fine tune and set various pal standards (b,d) and countries per channel to get proper sound (this was caused by local cable tv).

Two things would be great improvement for me:

1. Preview in window "edit properties of tv channel", now it is annoying and takes much time to jump between windows after every change to check the result,

2. Default frequency is set to 0 in analog section, so you have to know what frequency has every channel to make any adjustement.

Another case is support of ATI Theater 550. I use Sapphire Theatrix and there are no options for this card (I mean build in driver properties like noise filter or comb filter), and also sharpness etc. I know that there is ATI Dialog Box in system's Control Panel, but it seems that noise and/or comb filters do not work it MP. The picture quality in TVPlugin for Winamp (which has built in controls of ati's driver) is noticable better, especially on channels which has not perfect signal.

 

[paddlefoot]

I didnt have to do anything. It downloaded the required .net version and associated files (which i was impressed with) and I was away!

The only thing I would like to see is the configuration application incorporated in to the settings UI. Other than that its great!

 

[ariyanto]

1. What did you have to do before you got MP up & running ?

Once having installed MP to arrive at setup not knowing what to do was daunting but, being that although i am not a software developer I have over the years learned by trial and error how to use computers and build them as with the system I use now. For most people it is hard to know what to do in the configuration, which would put some people off using MP, but having searched and tried many media programmes MP is the best and what it offers or has planned is the leader in its field and best of all it’s free, having used showshifter before (now no more as they went bust). It was easy for me to get MP started but it is all the options and other parts that were hard to set up, and for a beginner is very hard. The Documentation for MP is very basic and without doing a lot of searching does not always provide the answers. Or the part that you need to know has not been written.

2. What could be improved to make install & configuration easier ?


To be able to enter config via the MP Interface would be good and 3 levels of config like beginner, Intermediate and Advance that way people would not get so confused by what all the items do and this could be Integrated with set up wizards for each level.

The Documentation needs to be updated with all menu items leading to the required information including plug-in, MP programme settings for each level, and what the config tabs or items do. These all can be web based with links from within MP to the page for the items via a help button for each tab or MP item. Being web based would allow MP not to have to have more large downloaded files for the help system. I think that having added help buttons and adding links to the web based help files and documentation would help so much, and having levels of config may also not put people off using such a great programme as MP. Documentation with graphics and step by step guides could also be used.

As I have said I am not a programmer developer and my knowledge of computer is advance but not perfect so helping with the development of MP I could not do but with the documentation, help files, set up procedures and step by step guides I could help with if you were interested as by background is in management training and so helping to train and develop peoples knowledge I can do. If you are interested as I am very and have been thinking of this for a long time since using MP just email me rpn@vodafone.net.

Thanks for MP

 

[jcompagner]

I just setup MediaPortal because i want to test digital tuners. And they now sort of work in MCE but i still had problems. So i first wanted to get it all working correctly in another system before (maybe) i go back to MCE.

What i encountered now are mostly things that default settings are not right.
for example the MCE remote Skip en Replay buttons don't work by default correctly in the TV Guide (it does paging but for that you have the CH/PG buttons) and when playing a video (not jumps forward and backward)

Also the default color of the "what is now running" in the TV Guide when the genres are colored is wrong, it is black that is completely not readable. That should be default to light gray or something like that. (i have done that now and it works great)

Also setup the tuner cards and finding the right channels (for me digital kabel from essent, zwolle, the netherlands). This should be contributed by the community (by us) so that there are a lot of more lists with the right name that you can choose and then finding channels will go much easier.

Also the Start media portal when windows start should be an option only for the current user. I have disabled it now and added it myself in the startup folder, because i also use that system through remote desktop. Then media portal shouldn't start.

There are a lot of configuration options that can't be done in the Media Portal TV UI. For example adding Music/Video folders to the list of to search folders.

Also the Movie and TV database should always be insync with the folder. For example i have had the recorded tv folder on the same folder as the MCE recorded tv folder. This was a big mistake because now if i press Recorded TV button i always see those with new dates (of the time i pressed the button) completely above. I have now made a new clean folder for Media Portal but i still see all the old onces (i pressed clean tv database in the MP Config many times)
i also can't play them anymore that doesn't work because ofcourse it can't find the files.. So media portal should automatically keep the TV databsae (and the Music and Video database) in sync with the real folders.. Remove them when nothing is there anymore, Add them when suddenly new once are there..

 

[player-x]

Ok my 2 cent

1. Codecs is i think for most users a big problem whit
MP should have them included in MP would be a great start
Ore at least a list of download links whit settings for the one's that need it, would be great
Its one of the reasons i miss sometimes my XBMC it played everything without a problem why can't MP do it

2. installing sat. photos and ware to find them was not easy eider

3. A hover box ore at least a help button for all function on every page in the setup menu would help a lot (most functions are straightforward but some you can only find out by tryle and error)
Same as options in MP it self have a text bar say wat a option dose would be great for some of the more complicated options.

4. a version of MP whit all (stable) plug-ins installed would be nice (don't now if this will cost to mouths bandwidth do)

5. A list of recommended hardware that work out of the box would be great
A list of components for low/mid/high end wrong hardware can give lots of problems for newbies (and instructions how to keep it silent)
(took me a bout 40 oure's of resears to find all the right components)
Think this would help a lot of newbies and tone down the cry's for help in the forum what to buy

6 DVB-T hard to find out what way i needed tune the frequency because my town was not listed

Also A good way to find out is ask a interested HTPC n00b friend to do a install on a PC without helping him and just see ware he got problems ore go wrong

 

[prostuff1]

1. What did you have to do before you got MP up & running ?

The original up and running step was pretty good. I did have to dive into the MP setup because my stuff was not in the "normal" place. I moved all my media to another HD.

2. What could be improved to make install & configuration easier ?

It would be nice if something about codecs was explained. That is the biggest problem I had. I am use to using a mac (and VLC, which i know understand uses its own codecs) and that caused me to not fully understand what codecs were and what they did. It would probably be easier if MP included or at least linked to a codec pack. I know this is not the ideal way to do it but it is the easiest for the beginner.

The other thing I had trouble with was getting some of my music to play. Some of it would and some would not, which confused me cause they seemed to be exactly the same from the file info I looked at. The "internal dshow player" for some reason did not like to play all of it. As soon as I switched it to the BASS engine everything worked fine. Not sure why that made a difference but it did.

Another thing that would be cool would be to have media portal "overlook" certain folders. My iTunes library is what media portal looks at and I have iTunes keep everything organized. There are some audiobook and Griffin iTrip stuff that is in there that I wish I could just remove from the list. If MP could present me a list of folders in the MP setup page under music and then I could uncheck a certain folder that would be useful for me.

The only other thing that was difficult to get working was subtitle and other audio tracks in my anime. It would be GREAT for those kinda things to be installed automatically. They are not very big file and it would save the pain of going around and searching the internet/this forum if they were installed by default.

All of that stuff aside, MP really is a great piece of software!! Thanks for the hard work!!

 

[VdR]

I have found the installation and configuration of MP a blast!

What did I do?
Download it on my MCE machine, run configuration once and go. Later optimized the configuration bit by bit, easy, I find them totally self explanatory. I never use the settings from inside MP, and certainly don't want my family to use them!

After this first installation I was quickly convinced that MP is a much better option than MCE. Therefore I wiped my HD of Windows MCE and did a clean install of Windows XP prof with MP. This does seem to have improved stability!

I don't like 'wizards', they remind me of MS software automatically messing up things ('more initiative than intelligence' (SM)).

What to do to make it easier?
eeeh, eeeh, ...

VdR

 

[kencl]

First time HTPC Setup

First of, a big THANK-YOU to all the developers/contributors - WOW.

This is my first TV tuner card and my first time watching TV on a PC. After reviewing various software options, I decided NOT to install software bundled with my new ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI and installed MP as my first choice

frodo: 1. What did you have to do before you got MP up & running?

- Install MP to non-standard drive/base folder
- Run setup
- Crash during channel scan sent crash details to Microsoft
- Restart Setup, rescan found 24 channels, upper 10 of which were snow. All channels indicated only around 20% signal strength
- continued setup to completion, intentionally skipping EPG setup

- Ran MP
- Went straight to My TV (at this point I didn't know if any channels would be unscrambled)
- lower 14 channels were all viewable, but image quality was medeocre
- tried switching to fullscreen but that didn't work
- realized quickly that I had to wait, sometimes 10 seconds, for an input mouse click to take effect (.net sluggishness?). Tried increasing the application priority to "high" in task list with no noticable improvement. Please note my system specs - I've assembled a high-end, tweaked, powerful gaming system. I found that viewing the Windows Task Manager, Performance tab on my secondary monitor and watching CPU usage helped me determine when MP was ready to receive another command input.
- had trouble with menu scroll speed on default home screen. Unless the cursor is in the middle of the list, the menu choices raced up/down too fast to stop at the one I want. Learned to bring cursor in from the side at the center and use up/down arrow keys/enter key to make desired choice
- watched with timeshifting enabled a movie on A channel. My first experience with timeshifting - VERY NICE FEATURE
- decided to record the movie and found out the next day that the recording included everything in the timeshift buffer prior to my hitting the record button - EXCELLENT! Increased timeshift buffer to 90 minutes to allow me the luxury of deciding late in the show that I want to keep it.

Day 2
- removed cable signal amplifier from cable input thinking it may be causing "moire like" striations (medeocre video quality).
- Ran setup and configured to start fullscreen and set start to basic mode to avoid too fast list scrolling mentioned above - good choice on both counts; fullscreen loads great and I can still use my secondary monitor to read online manual and search this forum. heh.
- figured out that channel changing is a lot faster when timeshift is turned off.
- changed video and audio CODECs to CyberLinks in an attempt to improve video quality. Picture quality improved slightly.

Day 3
- Used Mediaportal XMLTV Setup - North America to walk me through EPG setup. Very useful guide - there is no way I could have figured this out myself.
- Somewhere during EPG setup I discovered that the default PAL needed to be changed to NTSC, and that 1 physical card is actually 2 cards based on onboard circuitry.
- Changed to NTSC and rescanned channels. Wow, now I have 75 viewable channels, channel strength has jumped to 100% across the board, and video quality dramatically improved! Up to this point, I thought I'd have to buy a second cable descrambler, but not so
- continued EPG setup. Got confused as to why channels weren't showing up in Television -> TV Channels, TV Channels tab.
- Tried "Import from TV guide" button to no effect.
- viewed "TV Cards" tab and assigned first 6 channels to see if that worked. Closed setup, ran MP, saw that assigned channels now had channel abbreviations as supplied by XMLTV. Good.
- Shutdown MP back to MPSetup. Assigned all channels but TV Channels tab still showed original numbers only, not channel name.
- Cleared all, rescanned and reassigned. Same problem. Finally realized that imported channels were being added below scanned channels (which I didn't see until I scrolled down the list).
- Cleared all, did not scan, simply used "Import from TV Guide" then reasigned. This finally worked. I'm still not clear on whether I should have/needed to scan at all, or if just setting up the EPG initially was all that was needed. I don't know where the frequency data now being used originated.
- Back to MP, played with new TV guide, setup overnight show recording, letting windows screen saver come on as usual to see if that had a detrimental effect. It didn't.
- Havn't figured out how to sync channel number with list number yet (havn't searched forum on this one yet either). I mention it because it's an odd thing to a first time user to enter channel 45 on the keyboard and end up watching channel 47.

Day 4
- Watched show PVR'd while asleep and played with compression. Everything is working well (but still sluggish while executing a lot of commands) and I'm extremely happy. I can do everything I want with MP except watch one channel while recording a different one. I'm aware that's a TV card llimitation, not a problem with MP.

Again, thanks to all of you for this GREAT software

frodo: 2. What could be improved to make install & configuration easier?


1) Autodetect or emphasize importance of correct signal choice (PAL/NTSC).

2) Add walkthrough EPG setup guides to docs initially and consider automating or wizard driving this process.

3) Add "Assign All Available" button to Television -> TV Channels, TV Cards tab.
- also add windows shortcut key assignment to Available TV Channels list for CTRL-A (select all), CTRL-click (single selection without deselection of previous selections) and SHIFT-click (range selection).
- thanksfully draging a rectangle allowed vertically scrolling or selection would have been tedious.

4) Add "Save Settings" button to bottom of Setup which does not close the setup program. Clicking OK and having it autoclose is unusual and needing to restart is a minor hassle. If needbe, when "Save Settings" is clicked, bring up a window which disables all input while the config files are being rewritten which explains what's going on. Something like "You MUST wait while your configuration is being updated or you may loose changes/create corrupt/incomplete config"... You get the idea.

5) Incorporate documentation help details into F1, help cursor and context menu. EG Setup: General -> "Start with basic home screen" would display the details now found in docs.

In comparison to what I would consider a high-quality commercial HTPC/PVR application, I'd rate MP 9.5 out of 10. That it's free, and put together by hobbyists for the love of coding and benefit of all brings it to 12 out of 10 . You have built an extremely useful, user friendly, intuitive, feature rich application here folks! My decision to install MP over other available packages is well justified by my initial experience. Two big thumbs way up!

 

[AceSA]

I found the install and setup OK
Most problems / questions are answered in your docs, after I opened my eyes and looked. The only thing I can think to make it easier is if we could get the instuctions in a PDF format , maybe as part of the MP download, it would make it easier to read the instructions while the install and setup is happening. It is a fantastic programme and I have got most of my friends using it.